


Roses and Chocolate

by Marlex7



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Avengers Tower, F/M, Ice Cream, Roses, Sweet Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-05
Updated: 2016-09-05
Packaged: 2018-08-13 03:20:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7960474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marlex7/pseuds/Marlex7
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve wakes up in the common floor to hear Darcy returning from a less than stellar date. Actually, that's a bit of an understatement. The resulting conversation, complete with ice cream, might lead in a direction neither was expecting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Roses and Chocolate

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the Bite Sized Bits of Fiction community on LiveJournal. The prompt was: MCU, Steve Rogers/Darcy Lewis, “That better not be a pity rose. Pity chocolate I’ll take, but that’s it."

Steve woke with a start at the sound of the elevator door opening. He was disoriented for a moment, trying to figure out why there was an elevator in his bedroom, but then realized he was on one of the couches in front of the big TV on the common floor. He remembered coming up here to watch a movie by himself since everyone else had plans for the night and he must have fallen asleep. After that, Jarvis evidently turned off the TV and dimmed the lights.

That settled, Steve’s attention returned to the elevator. Only a select few had access to this floor, so he wasn’t worried about an intruder, but he was curious all the same about who was there, not yet ready to reveal his presence. He heard footsteps leave the elevator and move quickly to the kitchen area, lights turning on in their wake. Something small hit the counter island and slid across the surface as if it had been thrown. The freezer door opened, only to be closed hard a few seconds later, and something else slammed onto the island, sounding larger yet softer than the first item. Next a drawer opened and the sound of silverware rattling filled the room before that too was slammed shut. A stool shifted on the floor and the person sat down.

The footsteps had been small, probably female, narrowing the list of suspects considerably. He wouldn’t have heard Natasha moving about and Jane was not currently in the Tower, having left with Thor three days before on a brief trip to Asgard. Pepper rarely came to the common floor at this hour without Tony. That left Darcy.

Steve met Darcy shortly after he moved into the Tower. By then, she, Jane and Thor had been in residence for several months, and her reputation preceded her. He had rarely met a force like Darcy, and considering the people he usually spent time with, that was saying something indeed.

Although mostly acclimated to the 21st century, Steve’s immersion into modern pop culture had been put on hold during and his and Sam’s fruitless search for Bucky, and it didn’t take long for Darcy to realize his shortcomings and she quickly take charge of the situation. Unlike when the others made remarks about his knowledge gaps, however, Darcy didn’t act like she was patronizing him or making him the butt of some joke. Instead, she seemed genuinely excited to watch him experience various movies and televisions series for the first time. He figured there couldn’t be too many people who didn’t know the twist at the end of “The Empire Strikes Back,” something that, he had to admit, took him quite some time to get over.

Before Steve knew it, he was spending more time with her than just about anyone outside of Sam and considered her a valued friend. He hadn’t understood why Tony laughed the first time he called Darcy his friend in front the billionaire, but as the weeks turned into months, he started to realize the joke. They were great friends, alright, but he found himself hoping that they might become something else, something more.

She was beautiful, of course, everything he dreamed about finding when he was nothing more than a runt with a big heart and decided lack of self-preservation. But it was more than that. The things that made Darcy a good friend also made her someone he wanted to get closer to. She always treated him like Steve, not Captain America, which even within the confines of the tower was a treat. They shared many of the same passions, but were different enough to challenge each other, him to try new things and get out of his comfort zone, and her to accept the important role she played in the lives of those around her and that she truly belonged here in the crazy life of the tower. Yes, he was far gone, as Bucky might have said.

But how to manage that jump to something more, he didn’t know. He was still rubbish when it came to talking to women. Darcy was an exception because she had thoroughly broken through his defenses so quickly that they’d become friends before he could find himself tongue-tied.

Not helping matters was the fact that he had no idea if Darcy saw him the same way. Maybe she was perfectly fine with keeping their relationship at current levels. He didn’t want to ruin their friendship, but the longer he waited, the harder it was to ignore his feelings for her. 

Darcy, for her part, did occasionally go out on dates, although there was rarely a second one. Guys are dicks, she would often tell him, and he felt guilty that he was secretly glad they didn’t work out, but also worried that one day she might find the right guy and it wouldn’t be him.

And speaking of dates, Darcy was supposed to be going on one this evening, which was why Steve had been watching his movie alone. She’d met the guy during a girls’ night out with Jane and Natasha last week, and since neither of them had raised any red flags when he asked her out for dinner, Steve had reluctantly listened to her talk about her impending date without worrying about her safety.

But considering the multitude of slams he’d heard and--he checked his watch--the relatively early hour of her return, the date had not gone well.

“I can hear you thinking over there,” Darcy said suddenly.

Her voice starled Steve into sitting up, which had the unintended benefit of allowing him to see her, indeed sitting on one of the stools, a spoon handle sticking up out of a large tub of ice cream in front of her.

Before he could ask how she knew he was there, she said, “Your feet were hanging over the edge of the couch.”

Steve took a moment to savor a bit of pride on Darcy’s behalf that her spacial awareness training with Natasha was apparently going well. But then he focused more on Darcy herself, and he could tell her date had indeed not gone well.

In addition to the ice cream, there was a defeated look on her face that only appeared after a particularly bad date. In her professional life, where she was gaining more and more control over the tower’s science labs, Darcy was a force to be reckoned with, not only keeping Jane, Tony, Bruce and the rest of the scientists in line and alive, but also managing a veritable army of paid assistants and interns. In her personal life, at least when it came to dating, however, she couldn’t seem to catch a break. It wasn’t Darcy’s fault, Steve knew. It was just that men are generally dicks. He knew enough guys like that back in his day, but it seemed like the male species had perfected their talents to be complete assholes in succeeding seven or so decades.

“Mind if I join you,” Steve asked after standing up and beginning his way toward the kitchen.

“Sure, why not?” Darcy said, her tone sounding as defeated as her face looked.

Without another word, Steve walked over to the drawer, extracted his own spoon, and then sat down next to Darcy on the adjacent spoon. This wasn’t the first time he had helped her commiserate a less than stellar date with a tub of ice cream.

After a few spoonfuls of black raspberry chocolate, he ventured a question. “What’d he do?”

Darcy huffed. “It was more about what he didn’t do, which was look at my face for most of the salad and appetizer courses,” she said. “We didn’t make it to the main course, which was kind of a shame, because the linguini dish I ordered sounded really good.”

“He didn’t--” Steve started.

“Oh, he wasn’t physical, but he made it clear wanted me to stay. Said he deserved a bit of dessert after going through the trouble making the reservation and all, at least until he was wearing the contents of my wine glass,” she said, taking another bit of ice cream. “After that he seemed fine with me leaving.”

Steve felt his temper flare at her description of the asshole she’d spent half a dinner with, but couldn’t help a laugh at her revenge.

“Served him right,” Steve said.

“Yeah, it did,” she said glumly. “He had seemed nice at the club. Same story, different night, I guess. I don’t how I keep attracting these jerks. Well, I know how. They take one look at the girls and go all caveman. I like a good time as much as the next girl, but it wouldn't hurt to be romanced for a change, instead of everything simply being a pretense for getting lucky at the end of the night.”

She ate some more ice cream, and Steve watched her attention shift to the large crystal vase at the center of the island. It was one of those overly expensive pieces that Tony seemed to have an endless supply of to fill the tower. This particular one was sported an equally expensive looking bouquet of roses.

“You know the last time I got a rose from a date?” Darcy asked. “My junior prom. Mike Hartwell. Nice kid, really. Tried really hard to make sure I had a good time. On the way to my senior prom, my date Jake Cramer suggested we skip the dance altogether and go straight to the Billy Jenkins’ house, whose parents were gone for the weekend. I insisted we go to the dance, and got a ride back home with somebody else.”

Seeing where Darcy’s thoughts were headed, Steve interjected, “That’s on him. Not you. Same as tonight.”

“I know,” Darcy said, not sounding convinced at all. “I really do. But you go on enough bad dates and you begin to see the common denominator is you.”

Involuntarily, Steve reached out and grasped her free hand. “Darcy, please listen to me. You are a great person. You’re a good friend to those around you. You’re excellent at your job. You survive the craziness that the rest of us bring into your life. If some asshole can’t see that, then fuck him.”

His cursing seemed to shock the depression from her, and she laughed softly, giving his hand a gentle squeeze before pulling back. Steve missed the touch almost immediately.

“Thanks Steve. You’re always here when I need to cry in my ice cream. I think they broke the mold when they made you, and I don’t mean Erskine and his experiment. You’re going to make some girl really lucky one day.”

Steve felt himself warm at her words, but that didn’t last long because he saw the light in her eyes dimming again as the melancholy returned. 

“I think I’m just going to turn in for the night,” Darcy said. “I’ll leave you with the ice cream. Thanks again.” She slid off the stool and turned to wash her spoon off in the sink before putting it into the dishwasher.

That gave Steve a few precious moments to decide his next action. He had an idea, an opportunity he didn’t think he could pass up. He knew he didn’t want to let it go, but this could go very badly if he was wrong. They called him the man with the plan, but he was winging it here.

And without a plan, he had no way to predict how she was going to react when she turned around to see him holding out a single red rose he had quickly snagged from the vase.

“That better not be a pity rose,” Darcy said, a touch of bitterness seeping into the words. “Pity chocolate I’ll take, but that’s it.”

“No pity intended,” Steve said, his mouth suddenly dry. “Just a guy asking a really wonderful girl if she’d like to go out with him for dinner, because the guy really thinks this girl is the most beautiful, capable, amazing person he has ever met and he has been trying to figure out a way to ask her out for some time but was too scared to do it until now.”

Darcy stared at him for a few silent moments, long enough to send Steve down a rabbit hole of dread that he’s screwed up everything.

“You’re serious?” she asked.

“As serious as I have ever been about anything,” he said.

She reached out and gingerly took the rose from his hands, staring at it as she did so. She then looked back up at him, a smile growing on her face.

“Yes,” she said.

“Yes?” he asked, letting out the breath he’d been holding.

“Yes,” Darcy added with a laugh. “And thank you for the rose.”

“You’re welcome. I don’t have any chocolate on me, but I know a place that serves a mean linguini and has a great dessert selection. It’s even older than I am.”

Darcy laughed. “Sounds like a date.”

“I hope so. Tomorrow night?” Steve asked.

“Works for me, old man.”


End file.
